New to crossfire, a little confused

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:06

Hey guys I recently bought myself another Asus EAH6850(v2) to throw in crossfire. All the reviews/benchmarks tell that the 6850s scale really well together so I thought why not?

Note: I play on a 1360x768 native resolution LCD TV as a monitor currently which sucks balls :rolleyes:

, I'm upgrading to 1080p monitor shortly. Not sure if the low resolution is contributing no increase in fps?

I'm using Catalyst 11.10v2 with 11.9 CAPs

My problem is that i'm seeing basically zero fps increase in the games listed (actually a decrease in a couple :confused:

):

Bad Company 2
Crysis
Crysis Warhead
Fallout 3
Fallout New Vegas
Oblivion
World of Warcraft

However, in benchmark programs such as Heaven DX11 2.5 and Furmark 1.9.0 i'm seeing a 90%-110% increase in fps when enabling crossfire. Some results:

Furmark 1.9.0 720p preset 1 minute benchmark:

Without crossfire: 2523 score
With crossfire: 4909 (quicker than some GTX580s get :cool:

)

Heaven DX11 2.5 benchmark. 1 min benchmark 1360x768 res, 8x AA, 16xAF, normal tessellation

Without crossfire: 2301 frames
With crossfire: 4406 frames

So yeah, i'm a little confused as to why i'm not getting this kinda performance increase in actual games... well ANY performance increase for that matter :/ is this common with crossfire?.

Forgot to add I DID see a performance increase in BF3 beta with crossfire (15-20 fps increase)

Full system specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom ii x4 955 black edition @ 3.6ghz
GPU: 2x Asus EAH6850v2 1gb overclocked 900/1150 stock volts
Ram: 4gb Kingston 1333mhz DDR3
PSU: Corsair TX750v2
Mobo: Asus M4A79XTD Evo
Case: Haf 932 tower

gamerdude1989 · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:11

sometimes graphics cards require the extra resolutions to really be able to push out those frames per second.
Lower res doesnt always mean better fps...
My old 5870 for instance, used to give me around 25 - 30 fps on 720p, but as soon as i maxxed everything out on 1920x1080, the fps used to shoot up to around 40 - 49fps.

With decent cards, lower resolution just holds them back.

So id defo suggest getting a 1920x1080 monitor asap.

Mangochutney · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:11

Have you tried MSI afterburner to monitor both cards usage during a game?

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:14

gamerdude1989 said:
sometimes graphics cards require the extra resolutions to really be able to push out those frames per second.
Lower res doesnt always mean better fps...
My old 5870 for instance, used to give me around 25 - 30 fps on 720p, but as soon as i maxxed everything out on 1920x1080, the fps used to shoot up to around 40 - 49fps.

With decent cards, lower resolution just holds them back.

So id defo suggest getting a 1920x1080 monitor asap.

Aye i'm working on it

should have one by next week even

I was thinking Asus VH242H (can't link but overclockers sell it)

Out of stock from overclockers but can buy elsewhere, has gleaming reviews on Newegg and such.

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:18

Mangochutney said:
Have you tried MSI afterburner to monitor both cards usage during a game?

I haven't tried that no, but doesn't afterburner monitor stuff in a seperate window. Like would i have to be windowed to see the results?

Surveyor · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:22

Radeon Pro will show your GPU usage in game. Settings > CrossfireX > Tick the box to Enable the CrossfireX bar.

And remember that Crossfire only works in full screen mode.

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:24

Surveyor said:
Radeon Pro will show your GPU usage in game. Settings > CrossfireX > Tick the box to Enable the CrossfireX bar.

And remember that Crossfire only works in full screen mode.

Will give that a shot and post results.

And yeah I know about the windowed mode rule

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:37

Unsure if this is a good thing or bad thing, confused about the readings on the left. Take a look:

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 16:57

Another test showing Fallout 3

ThePengu1n · 10 Oct 2011 at 17:27

Could well be the preview drivers you have installed, uninstall them and download the latest (11.9 drivers).

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 17:31

ThePengu1n said:
Could well be the preview drivers you have installed, uninstall them and download the latest (11.9 drivers).

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

Will give it a shot, btw this is what Crysis Warhead shows:

ColonelMustard · 10 Oct 2011 at 18:29

After reinstalling 11.9 there was no difference

However! After switching to 1920x1080 on bad company 2, and testing 1 card vs 2, I could see a clear performance increase this time. Even though my monitor only supports 1360x768 max(monitor goes 1080i mode and shows ugly blurred picture), It pretty much leads me to believe that my ancient 720p LCD is infact bottlenecking me :rolleyes:

Will get a nice 1080p 24" monitor next week and see how I get on

Thanks for the replies guys really appreciate your time

Enzo · 10 Oct 2011 at 22:13

ColonelMustard said:
After reinstalling 11.9 there was no difference

However! After switching to 1920x1080 on bad company 2, and testing 1 card vs 2, I could see a clear performance increase this time. Even though my monitor only supports 1360x768 max(monitor goes 1080i mode and shows ugly blurred picture), It pretty much leads me to believe that my ancient 720p LCD is infact bottlenecking me

Will get a nice 1080p 24" monitor next week and see how I get on

Thanks for the replies guys really appreciate your time

I'm using high settings on bc2 with 4AA, 16AF and getting anywhere between 100 - 150 fps on BFBC2 cpu is a i5 2500 though @5Ghz, also 1920x1200

BF3 was a very average 60fps on ultra...hope ATI / EA sort that one for full release (

MeMeMeMe · 11 Oct 2011 at 00:12

ColonelMustard said:
Even though my monitor only supports 1360x768 max(monitor goes 1080i mode and shows ugly blurred picture), It pretty much leads me to believe that my ancient 720p LCD is infact bottlenecking me

I've never heard of that, but I wouldn't know - it's a long time since I've had such a low res monitor.

Afterburner does have the ability to monitor and show GPU usage in game.
It has an on screen display feature in the settings - tick the details you want displayed, and they'll show up at the top left of the screen.
You may have to disable RadeonPro's crossfire bar to see it though.

Republic · 11 Oct 2011 at 02:16

Would I be right in saying that not all games support Crossfire or Duel GPU cards?

harmony · 11 Oct 2011 at 08:04

At your resolution these games are mostly CPU-bounded, especially when you are playing with a low clock frequency AMD CPU.

SheepBeast · 11 Oct 2011 at 13:58

harmony said:
At your resolution these games are mostly CPU-bounded, especially when you are playing with a low clock frequency AMD CPU.

this.

upping the resolution will probably keep framrate similar to how it now. take a card out though, and you'll notice it drop significantly.

i've never heard that a low res will reduce fps, and i'm pretty sceptical that this is the case. much more likely that the low res just shifts the bottleneck onto the cpu

Mangochutney · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:06

Surveyor said:
And remember that Crossfire only works in full screen mode.

So thats why I was getting a low score in Heaven! I didn't know that and was running it in windowed mode. What a Tard!!

Oh, and Afterburner records for a few mins or so. I normally play a game then check the results after. It records GPU usage,temps, FPS etc.

sedmonds · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:18

I own two unlocked 6950s (2600k CPU) and my crossfire usage in games like BFBC2 is basically maxed out at 2560x1600, so I'd say your problem is one of two things:

1. Your CPU is holding your graphics back.
or
2. You're running in such a low resolution that the cards are not being taxed at all - load up FRAPS and check your FPS whilst in game.

Final8y · 11 Oct 2011 at 15:41

SheepBeast said:
this.

upping the resolution will probably keep framrate similar to how it now. take a card out though, and you'll notice it drop significantly.

i've never heard that a low res will reduce fps, and i'm pretty sceptical that this is the case. much more likely that the low res just shifts the bottleneck onto the cpu

Driver Overhead can give you lower FPS with CF combos on lower resolutions as there is too much bottleneck on CPU depending on the game.

Anything below 1680x1050 is a waste of time with CF.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/10.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/11.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/14.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/15.html